“In 1982, a man dying from AIDS-related complications loaded his life into his car and drove from Colorado to Massachusetts. This was one year after The New York Times had reported a “rare cancer seen among 41 homosexuals.” The man knew he wouldn’t be able to get the kind of care he needed in his home state so he sought treatment at Boston’s Mass General Hospital. From there, he drove onto Provincetown—the remote, idyllic hamlet at the very tip of Cape Cod that had long been a refuge for queer men and women—that December to die. Preston Babbitt, owner of Ptown’s Rose and Crown guest house, heard about the man’s arrival in town and found him a place to stay, bought him a bag of groceries, and because it was Christmastime, a tree. The man died the following spring.”
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